An open letter to my friends in Europe.

I and most of my friends and colleagues are grief-stricken by the calamitous result of the referendum on 23 June. Forces of narrow nationalism have succeeded, by a campaign based on outrageous and deliberate lies and a calculated appeal to the worst instincts in human nature, in throwing the UK and Europe into chaos. They have been able to rely on persistent lies and myths generated over years by tabloid newspapers owned by billionaires with their own agenda, and a general resentment, which I understand, towards an economic system that seems to work for the wealthy but not for the poor – a resentment which they succeeded in directing towards the EU.

I am heartbroken that I and my family are going to be forced to give up our European citizenship because of prejudice and fear. This loss of that identity feels like a bereavement. The idea that France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, whose languages, people, cultures, poetry, landscapes, food and histories I love so much, are no longer to be my home but are now to be foreign to me is one that I just cannot begin to comprehend. And England – and here I mean England – does not feel like the country I grew up in. So I think I am not alone in seriously considering my and my family’s continued future in this country.

The current UK Government deserves no sympathy. This situation has arisen because of a catastrophic misjudgement on its part. Indeed the Government is disintegrating as I write this – along, it seems, with the main party of Opposition, the Labour Party. And the politicians who are likely to take over are responsible for the lies and xenophobia of the Brexit campaign. They too deserve no sympathy: it is their ambition, cynicism and dishonesty that has brought the UK to this pass.

But please remember that over 48% of us voted against this. And the overwhelming majority of young people – those who were born and have lived all their lives as European citizens, and who think of Europe as their home – wanted to remain. They included my daughter, who voted for the first time in this referendum and who is now, like all her friends, distraught at what has been done to them. They are our future. One day, when those older generations who voted for Brexit in selfish disregard for the values and futures of the young have passed away, our children will reverse this decision and return home to Europe.

So I desperately hope that during the period before this decision is reversed, we can keep a continuing close relationship between the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. That is what all of us who voted to stay in, and even quite a large proportion of those who voted to leave, wish for. Negotiating that new relationship is going to require a lot of patience, generosity, and statesmanship. Your leaders will understandably feel that this is a problem of the UK’s own making. But I would be enormously grateful for anything that any of you can do, as voters and participants in the debates in your own countries about what happens next, to encourage your leaders to keep the door open to the UK and as far as possible to maintain the UK within the European system, and in particular the basic economic freedoms of the EU, if not the EU itself.

Even more importantly, in these dreadful times, please remember that for us in the UK the close ties of friendship that bind us to our friends and colleagues across Europe have never been more necessary or valued than they are now.

Yours in sorrow

George